Food stamp use grows amid recovery

The recession is over, unemployment is down, consumer confidence is up and the housing market is starting to boom again. But one economic indicator from darker times – a rise in food stamp applications – shows no sign of slowing down.

The number of people receiving food stamps in San Diego County has more than doubled in the last six years, from more than 98,000 on average in the 12 months ending April 2008, to more than 250,000 in the 12 months ending April of this year.

The dollar value of those monthly benefits, marketed as CalFresh, has more than tripled in the same time period, going from about $10.6 million a month on average to $37.7 million a month. That's because of the higher enrollment and a boosting of the benefit itself as part of the federal stimulus program.

The increase is seen as progress to those who, for years, have been frustrated as San Diego County has lagged in signing up eligible recipients. Even with the added enrollment, San Diego ranks toward the bottom among counties for signing up eligible recipients.

Advocates say the program has a host of social benefits – and brings federal money to the region, helping the economy. Critics say the upward trend shows an entitlement that's gone seriously off track, creating dependency.

Both beneficiaries and benefits increased faster in San Diego County than in the state as a whole, at a rate loosely comparable to Orange and Riverside counties. The program grew slower in Imperial, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino counties.

Economists marked the technical end of the recession in summer 2009. An official who manages the county’s food stamp program says any declines in use of benefits tend to lag behind economic recovery.

During the recession, many middle-class people were laid off and ended up taking lower paying jobs, a local economist said.

Alan Gin, economist at University of San Diego— University of San Diego

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Alan Gin, economist at University of San Diego
/ University of San Diego

“We really need to be in the 5s in terms of percentages to be in a good situation economywise,” Gin said.

An activist for lower taxes says he doubts beneficiaries whose economic situations improve rush to withdraw from the program, and that the numbers illustrate an expansive, many-layered safety net that offers the wrong kinds of incentives.

“We’re setting up a system that fosters dependency and penalizes productivity, working,” Rider said. “It’s a very pernicious system in that regard.”

Faith Hilali, 41, of Santee, says she would like to find work.

The single mother, who said she receives no assistance from the homeless father of her two children, was benefiting from food stamps, as well as cash assistance and MediCal, the state’s health insurance program for the poor, for a couple years until 2006, when she got a job as a parking attendant at a casino and stopped drawing benefits.

Hilali, who holds an associate’s degree from Grossmont College, was promoted to hostess and then to a position coordinating tour groups but was laid off in 2008.

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Hilali said she drew unemployment benefits for a year, then in 2009 signed back up for CalFresh and cash benefits. She completed a training program last year and is trying to become certified as a dental assistant.

About half of food stamp recipients in San Diego County are children, and about 5 percent are seniors, according to a June report from the county.

San Diego County has ranked low in the percentage of eligible people signing up for food stamps, a situation advocates and county officials have been addressing for several years. The head of a nonprofit that works to help people access benefits views the growth in recipients positively, since more poor people are accessing the services they need.

As more eligible people access the services, taxpayers should see savings in other shared costs such as health care, said Jennifer Tracy, executive director of the San Diego Hunger Coalition.

“People seem to think it’s an either-or. Either we pay for food, or we don’t,” Tracy said. “And to me the either-or is either we pay for food, or we pay for much more expensive things like medical costs and education. To me, I would rather see us pay for food.”

Tracy’s group trains and coordinates a network of five dozen nonprofit agencies where people can complete much of the application process for food stamps without having to wait in line, or on the phone, or at a government office.

In terms of signing up low-income people, the county has ranked in the bottom quarter of the state’s 58 counties for at least the last four years but has moved up the rankings, from 55th in the 2010 report to 47th in the most recent report, according to a survey by California Food Policy Advocates, a nonpartisan group based in Oakland that favors increased access to nutrition benefits.

The group creates a rough measure of eligible people based on certain criteria, and divides into that the number of people receiving food stamps, less the number who received help because of a flood, fire or other natural disaster. San Diego County’s sign-up rate was 51.2 percent in the group's study this year, compared to 45 percent last year. That also compares to a statewide figure of 65.5 percent.

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The county says the proportion of enrollees to eligible people is actually higher — 67 percent, according to an estimate the county produced last fall — when factoring out additional groups like students who may meet income guidelines but are not eligible. The Oakland study did not consider ineligible students.

San Diego passed Sierra and Santa Cruz counties, for example, in the share of eligible recipients signed up.

Rick Wanne, director of eligibility operations for the county Health & Human Services Agency, said San Diego’s demographics can skew the numbers or present particular challenges in signing up people for food stamps.

In San Diego, military families receive housing allowances that can boost their income beyond the eligibility levels, and immigrants who qualify may still be leery of filling out government paperwork that requires them to document all members of their household.

Wanne said senior citizens in particular feel a sense of pride that prevents them from seeking benefits.

“We try to make as great an effort we can to sign up every single individual that’s eligible that we can,” Wanne said. “Why folks don’t come forward, I don’t know that anybody really has the answer.”

Wanne said within the last year the county has decreased wait times at its call center, changed the application process so that each case is handled start-to-finish by one worker, and improved its system for signing up online.

According to the county’s stats, the average wait time at the health and human services customer service center in May was 14 minutes, 46 seconds. That’s roughly half the average time in May of last year, 28 minutes, 40 seconds.

A small but growing slice of beneficiaries receives food stamps through a state program for legal immigrants who have been here less than five years but otherwise qualify for the federal food stamp program.

That group is growing fast.

Benefits distributed under the California Food Assistance Program have gone up five-fold in the last six years in San Diego County, from $1 million in 2008 to $4.9 million this year. The monthly average number of county residents on the state program went from 990 to 3,314.

Statewide, increases were less steep, with benefits nearly tripling, from $22.6 million to $61.7 million. The average number of beneficiaries went from 20,791 to 39,989.